I think that services on Internet must be free, at least, at starting.
If you need more featured services, they must be at payment, just for maintaining site performance and developing (if it is the case).

There's also movements about freedom on Internet, such Open Source http://www.opensource.org/ , or free network connection using wireless http://www.freenetworks.org/ (search for links on this site to find nodes near to you to access freely and highbandiwitted to Internet).

There's also free software initiatives, such some OSes as Linux http://www.linux.org/ or FreeBSD http://www.freebsd.org/ or OpenBEos http://www.openbeos.org ; or complete free sites with lots of free apps for any system https://sourceforge.net/

My thought is: there's a lot of sites with free resources, but if someone are very interested on a topic, this user must pay for the service (or anything related); an example, Blender3D (a 3d graphics program previously released as free software, was discontinued by developpers, and the comunity are paying for get the sources and making free for all http://www.blender3d.com ).

It relies upon a secure, non-interest method of payment. I think it is a matter of time before people realize that for-pay internet activity is feeding 10-20% of their spending money to credit-card companies.

I know that I would spend vast amounts of money online if there were a decent way to do it. I was within days of getting a Paypal account when Ebay bought them and all the class-action talk started. Now, i dunno. Credit cards are one of those unseen drains on the world economy that sooner or later will face scrutiny. I know people that do *all* their buying and bill-paying with credit cards. When will they get pissed about what amounts to a old-testament tithing to huge lending organizations, just to do what the rest of us do for free? 6-30% interest on groceries and the electric bill? When did we get so jaded that we expect to pay interest on *everything*?

What about all the emerging countries wherein getting a credit card is pretty much out of the question? Will we write off billions of consumers because they don't spend plastic? There has to be a solution somewhere.

Anyway, that is a little, slightly on-topic rant. I don't have a problem with subscriptions in games, software, sites, or pretty much anything. All my gripes in the past have either had to do with the relationship between designers and the developers, or the selling of previously-free content. Don't sell what was freely given to you, and make it as easy for people to pay as possible.

End-users should pay for product, no questions asked. They are the Great Maw that consumes and doesn't give back. Let the cheap masses of unwashed feed at Yahoo or MSN, where they can click banners to their heart's content. For the sake of the upstanding users who demand better, and users in all parts of the world, there needs to be a method of payment that works cheaply and without the red tape of plastic.

bakerstreet has a good point don't sell content that was previously free, wincustomize has done a fabulous job in doin this, ive become a big fan of wincustomize as of latley so as soon as i save enough cash im gonna get a subscribtion

Payments for services is fine by me. I pay for subscriptions to news sites or buy software. But what pisses me most about some sites and developers is how they lock people to one particular way of payments. How many wishfull users out there who would gladly pay for service, providing they have a way. I remember mail exchanges with one developer who was about to start selling his software online. I wrote him: "Look, I have debit card and there's some site that I know of, that can process payments with debit card. Like WorldPay or ShareIt. Can you use them?" He wrote back: "If you can't pay, I can send you reg info free then" I said: "I can pay. I will pay. Just give me a choice!" He didn't and went with company that takes Visa and Amex. I don't know, maybe to some such problems are non-existant, but to have a credit card in my coutry is fairly difficult. So OK, provide subscription, but give a chance to people. 5%? That's 5% with Visa or some other credit card. How many percent are out there who can pay other way?

And Carlitus, while free software does exist, it's not 100% of them really free. It might be that free is limited, lite version. Or Suse charging $995 for email server, which is built using open source, free software. Or RedHat's web server for $1000 (using apache, php, etc. all free software).

After all the moaning is over, I would bet that a great percentage of site's will be subscription by the end of next year. So I think we'd better get used to it.